EFFECT
Bought from Ebay. Inventor/originator A J Melven. As per the blurb....
Crooked con-ception is a brand new magic effect with playing cards. It allows the performer to play a seemingly fair game of cards with a spectator but have the odds of winning stacked in his favour. The performer takes a borrowed shuffled pack of cards and creates a few piles on the table. The rest of the pack is discarded, and each packet is shuffled and cut by the spectator and replaced on the table. The performer never touches the cards again in the whole routine. The spectator freely chooses any packet he wants then the performer chooses one. The top cards are turned over and the higher valued card wins. The cards are then re-shuffled by the spectator and you play again, each time the spectator freely choosing any pile. Yet, despite these impossible conditions, Incredibly, the performer will win most of the time!
COST
About £6 for the written routine only.
DIFFICULTY
1. About half an hour to learn which cards to remove to make up the piles.
REVIEW
This is everything it says in the blurb. Without giving things away, its an effect involving odds, and a very clever way of improving them !! I spent an hour or so last night playing with this and developed my own adaption of it. I intend to work this as a 'magician can beat the odds' type of effect.
After the spectator chooses their pile you have them turn over the top card then select your pile and turn over your card (or let them do it). At this stage I play 'the best out of three' So we both turn over the top three cards and I nearly always win.
I take 10 small coins from my pocket and say that we will play 10 games. With everything being fair (that's a laugh) we should come out 50:50 winning 5 games each but with me being a magician I'll beat the odds and get far more than they do. The coins are just used as markers to keep the score.
Having spent some time doing this last night I found that I always got 7 out of 10 or 8 out of 10 so I've now prepared a business card sized piece of card in a small envelope which I put on the table at the beginning. Not only do I beat the odds and win far more than I lose I then tip out the card to show that I predicted the end score for a kicker finish.
OVERALL
Can't wait to try this in the pubs on Friday. If I hit some under the effect gamblers I may end up paying for my night out
Spot on effect which gets 10 out of 10 from me.
